The present invention relates to methods and systems for obtaining information from a computer. More particularly, the present invention relates to a dialog system for implementing a dialog between a user and the computer.
Many modern computer interfaces are based on computer driven interactions in which the user must follow an execution flow set by the computer or learn one or more commands exposed by the computer. In other words, the computer interfaces do not adapt to the manner in which the user wishes to interact with the computer, but instead force the user to interact through a specific set of interfaces.
Research recently has focused on having a computer-user interface that is dialog based. A dialog is naturally implemented with a spoken word. However, current spoken dialog systems mostly provide system-initiative dialog where the user can only follow the way in which the system is designed. Even in some mixed-initiative spoken dialog systems, limitations exist when the user wants to initiate a sub-dialog on a particular subject. Such systems are also seldom robust to the uncertainties that exist in conversation-based interaction. In other words, the system may not perform well due to low-level speech recognition errors or high-level intention recognition errors.
Accordingly, there is an on-going need to improve dialog systems used in computer interfaces. A system and method that addresses, several or all of the problems discussed above would be particularly advantageous.